EFFY Weighs In On His Match With Jeff Jarrett in GCW, Talks Creating Moments With Bigger Stars

EFFY recently discussed his match with Jeff Jarrett at The WRLD on GCW earlier this year and more in a recent interview. The GCW star spoke with Ranee Paquette on her The Sessions podcast and discussed the match and feud with Jarrett, which preceded Jarrett heading back to WWE to become Senior Vice President of Live Events in WWE. Some highlights from the interview are below, per Fightful:

On his match with Jarrett at The WRLD on GCW: “I have to brag on myself. Now that he ran back to Vince (McMahon), and maybe we’re doing a Memphis storyline where this goes longer, but I think I deserve one more match. I was at the top of the mountain. I did not die to the guitar shot that happened at Hammerstein Ballroom. I no sold a guitar shot, I’ve never seen it done from Jeff Jarrett. Second, I took The Stroke with a guitar around my neck, I’ve never seen it done before. Everybody tried to talk me out of it because it’s very dangerous, but I said, ‘I have to have this moment.’ Everyone asked, ‘How is Jeff Jarrett?’ I got the full Jeff Jarrett experience. I got to fight him, I got to lose to him, and I got to have him decide to change the finish halfway through a show. You have to get the full Jeff Jarrett and when you look back on the memoir you go, ‘Well, he got me too,’ me and Vince have that in common now.”

On creating moments stars who made their name in major companies: “There’s an Effy epiphany that happens, and I’ve seen it happen, Jeff Jarrett, Cardona, PCO, Jimmy Jacobs, Fandango, Minoru Suzuki, where I don’t have the background of ‘he worked at Ring of Honor, NXT, IMPACT, we know his thing and we know he’s safe.’ There’s a little bit of an outlaw unsafeness to me existing. I know I’m soft and kind of gay, but I’m also hardcore and crazy and I talk a lot of shit, so there’s a little bit of apprehension when we get in. I made it a mission to go, ‘I want to make sure when I’m getting these moments and these matches, that Effy is still in this match.’ It’s not just ‘thank you so much for this opportunity to stand next to you and do your moves,’ Effy is in this match. I have to sometimes approach things with my ‘mark brain’ turned off. I have turn it off completely.

“I remember having to lambast Jeff Jarrett a little bit because he wanted to do some things that I was not going to have happen and I was not going to let happen. You’re going, ‘this is bizarre right now that I’m holding the line to Jeff Jarrett and telling him what he’s going to do,’ but if I don’t, I’m not going to get the product I want and I’m not going to get the experience I want. After they finish working with me, they get the moment where they let it out and are like, ‘that was fun and enjoyable, the people loved it’ or you get the moment in the middle of the ring, and this one is way more powerful, where you know we’re planning to do something and it’s really loud and the people are into it and excited, and they take a second because they feel it and you go, ‘Yeah, we did that together. You didn’t think this was going to happen. You thought this was going to be a task.’ Jeff Jarrett famously said, ‘Where is Eppy?’ He was calling me Eppy the first time before we met. When that is your starting point, where someone you’re supposed to be in a 50/50 feud with, you have a little work to do, but approaching everything with ‘we’re professional humans, we’re regular people, I know there is a storied history, but in this moment it’s Effy and you, we have to both make it look good.'”